Transcript of "Eliana Giannella Simonetti"

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In these last 30 years I’ve been visiting places few people know, interviewing people from many parts of the world, and writing about what I see, read and learn. I talked with people that most of us could barely expect to even say hello to. Here I’ll show some of the things I wrote – excerpts of recently published texts in Portuguese, English and Spanish. There are also some pictures – mostly from me. I hope you enjoy. Luciana De Francesco’s images ELIANA GIANNELLA SIMONETTI

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<ul><li>http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditc20082cer.en.pdf </li></ul><ul><li>Cultural tourism: Impressions of the Peruvian experience </li></ul><ul><li>A way to reduce poverty but also a risk for the preservation of traditional peoples' values </li></ul>Peru is a country with a rich and varied nature, a place of contrasts. People have a thousand-year-old culture of building irrigation channels, which enables them to cultivate areas that previously were desert. Its heritage, including the ancient Inca Empire, Cuzco and the lost city of Machu Picchu, is spectacular. Peruvian traditions are distinctive and cultural tourism appears to be a good alternative to increase people's quality of life and self-esteem, creating new jobs, economic growth and development. Tourism is the third most important economic activity in Peru, employing 500,000 people to serve the 1.6 million visitors who spent $1.5 million in the country in 2006. Certainly, tourism helps Peruvian quality-of-life indexes increase. But there are many challenges for policy-makers in this field. What is really needed are sustainable projects, designed with a solid basis, so that real people – with unique skills and knowledge – are not transformed into actors with no substance.

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BRASIL -Tatuoca, Pernambuco - 2003 PERSEVERANÇA, CRIATIVIDADE E MÃOS NA MASSA Existem trabalhos que merecem nota por encontrarem soluções simples para problemas complexos. Demandam imaginação, trabalho e pouco dinheiro. É o caso do projeto Mãos na Massa, desenvolvido pelos funcionários do grupo Odebrecht. Afeta os moradores de uma pequena ilha, Tatuoca, distante cerca de meia hora (em barco a motor) do complexo industrial e portuário de Suape, em Pernambuco. Quanta gente? Exatamente 164 pessoas – 70 crianças. Uma população que vivia completamente isolada, sem energia elétrica, água potável e qualquer assistência do Estado. http://www.odebrechtonline.com.br/materias/00201-00300/299 A plant in the forest The setting brings to mind scenes from a movie. After traveling for 35 km along a road bordered by dense, carefully preserved forest, we arrive in a world of red, spiked with enormous metal structures. This is the Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (Vale) iron mine in the Carajas Mountains, in the northern Brazilian state of Para. The mine’s plant is being expanded to twice its original size. The Carajas National Forest is located in the municipality of Parauapebas, 180 km from Maraba, the nearest town with an airport that handles commercial flights. People working in the mountains who want to visit their families in another part of the country have to face a three-hour drive to the airport, let alone the time it takes to fly home. There are two ways to bring in cargo: by road, or using Vale’s railroad, which connects the mine in the mountains with the port of São Luis, in the state of Maranhao. In the case of road transportation, trucks arriving in Parauapebas (a word in the indigenous Tupi-Guarani language that means “shallow river”) have just one option: passing through the only Vale gate that authorizes entry into the Carajas Mountains the largest mineral province on the planet. Carajas supplies Brazil and other countries (including Europe, Asia and the US). Shipments leave the mountains to Ponta da Madeira’s port aboard 10 trains with 205 cars carrying 110 tons of iron ore apiece on a daily basis.

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Before reading any further, stop and look around. It might be a good time to notice that plastics are everywhere: in chairs, tables, flooring, clothes, handbags, computers, pens, packaging and household goods in general; in cars… Whether hidden or in plain sight, just about everything contains a plastic component. And there is always something new coming on the market. Plastics and their components are germ resistant, which is a key factor in their growing use in the health sector. Surgical gloves, masks and other kinds of medical equipment are no longer made of metal, glass or wood. Even blood bags, which were made of glass nearly 10 years ago, are now 100% plastic. The same is true for prostheses used to replace bones and joints. The result: a huge reduction in the transmission of diseases and hospital infections. Plastic also prevents the rejection of implants. Artificial muscles based on polymers change shape when stimulated electrically, and generate movement. The “age of plastic” is moving forward at such a fantastic pace that by the time you have finished this article, many functional and beautiful things will have been created. In all sectors, plastics are replacing conventional materials. www.odebrechtonline.com.br/materias/00401-00500/453 Plastics in the spotlight http://www.odebrechtonline.com.br/materias/01201-01300/1279/ Plastics are part of life in cities and the countryside Londrina, western Paraná, August 2007. The historic Belmonte farm, which once produced coffee and soybeans, is now home to a company that produces tilapia fish fry and fingerlings for sale in Brazil and abroad. Now, it contains tanks and hatcheries where fish live and breed, and delivers tilapia fish that grow rapidly. This is because the breeders are selected and the entire process is controlled with the use of plastic equipment. When the fingerlings are 4 cm long, they are packaged in plastic bags containing water and oxygen, and mailed to their buyers. Mountain region of Espirito Santo . For decades, descendants of Italians and Germans have planted vegetables and strawberries but in the 1980s, different kinds of agricultural pests decimated entire crops. In recent years, farmers use plasticulture. What is it? The earth is covered with sturdy black plastic, to keep the plants safe from the insects and fungi. The fields are covered with a plastic tarp and irrigated with water mixed with balanced nutrients carried by PVC pipes straight to the roots of each seedling. Getting better performance at a lower cost is always the main goal – and plastics have proved to be very useful in achieving that goal in all industries. Some applications for plastics are already part of our everyday lives. There is also an entire universe of plastic components that we are not even aware of. Eyeglass lenses are made of polycarbonate, a thermoplastic that is 200 times more impact resistant than glass. Health care has been an important growth area for plastics. Virtually everything in a modern hospital is made from plastic composites.

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MEXICO 2007 - Land of opportunity Sinaloa, one of the 32 states that make up the United States of Mexico, is a semi-arid region where temperatures often soar as high as 45 C and rainfall is rare. Until a few years ago, life was hard for local residents. As if the heat and short rainy season were not enough, the Fuerte River, which flows through the state, would flood when it did rain, leaving towns, cities and fields underwater. Now those floods are a thing of the past. There was record rainfall in 2005 but no flooding at all. On the contrary, farmers reported excellent harvests of tomatoes, maize, vegetables and wheat – 80% exported to the United States, Japan and Europe. In part, this transformation is the result of a project built by Construtora Norberto Odebrecht, which arrived in Mexico 15 years ago. The contractor's achievement wasthe construction of a dam and hydroelectric plant near the highest point of the Fuerte River. This prevented flooding and enabled farmers to build irrigation channels, in addition to generating electricity and developing activities such as fishing and tourism. The official name of Los Huites is the Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta Dam. The project became an emergency measure when a devastating flood ravaged 60,000 hectares of land, including towns and cities, in early 1991.

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www.odebrechtonline.com.br Diversity transforms a nation We’re in Liberia, where two projects are currently underway for the world’s largest steel maker, Arcelor-Mittal. One thousand Liberians are working at the job-site, along with about 60 people from 18 other countries, including Kenya, Cameroon, Croatia, the UK, Colombia, the US, Lebanon and India. Numerous cultures and beliefs coexist in perfect harmony: Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Muslims and Mormons. There are people with master’s degrees and doctorates, and others with high-school diplomas. In this atmosphere of diversity and unity, Odebrecht is carrying out studies, planning and managing an iron mining project, and restoring virtually half of Liberia’s railway infrastructure, which have been abandoned for 20 years and need to be entirely rebuilt.

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“ Land of freedom.” That is the meaning of Liberia, the only country in West Africa that was never a colony of western nations. Founded in 1847 by the American Colonization Society, an organization established in the United States for slaves freed in that country and avoid racial strife, Liberia was born a republic with a constitution inspired by that of the USA and the motto: “The love of liberty brought us here.” The name of its capital, Monrovia, is a tribute to James Monroe, the President of the United States when it was founded. Liberia’s history has been marked by conflict since its inception. Estimates are that during 14 years of war, over 270,000 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced. Although endowed with natural wealth, Liberia experienced a sharp descent into poverty. Peace came in 2005. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected as the first democratically elected female president in continental Africa. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has introduced a program to improve transparency and make the best use of public funds. According to the 2007 report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), between 2000 and 2004 Liberia’s economy recorded a negative growth figure of -9.6%. In 2007, however, the nation’s economy had recovered, reaching a positive figure of 8.5%.

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www.totumex.com.br/mostra_ok.php?id =8 Who’s afraid of internationalization? Over the last years, Brazilian companies have become aware of a new imperative, something they had never even dreamed of. For many of them, expansion into the international market has become their only real chance to increase sales, dilute operational risks and protect their home markets against attack by heavyweight competitors from abroad. For companies such as Gerdau, Embraer, and dozens of others, the expansion into new markets has become not just an option, but the main option for growth. The most ingenious entrepreneurs have already realized that exports from Brazil do not guarantee a global presence, something that becomes much easier when a foothold has been firmly achieved in production areas of other countries. The overseas presence helps companies increase their awareness regarding local needs and contributes to reducing the cost of accessing clients. “It is an absolutely natural trend that the leading companies in emerging countries become international,” says Wieland Gurlit, a McKinsey consultant specialized in mining and steel. “ Foreign direct investment is blamed for harming the interests of workers and the country, but the fact is that if a company grows overseas, it gains strength and stability to face periods of crisis,” says Dante Mendes Aldrighi, a professor at São Paulo University’s college of Economics and Business. “Foreign and domestic investments are not mutually exclusive: they can, and should, complement each other.”